Be Mused Art » From the Sketchbook

Summer is Done – Thank Goodness

Melia — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 04:15:02 +0000

This has been a horrible summer here in Texas. We broke the record for number of days in the triple digits. We have had no rain to speak of. And now we have wildfires destroying homes and farms across the state. And our area has had an energy shortage and we were asked to use as little energy possible in the afternoons when the heat had everyone relying on their air conditioning. It was even too hot to be hitting the pool, so our local pools closed up shop in early August.
So the result was us sitting at the local library sketching and reading during the hottest part of the day in order to reduce our personal energy use and still stay remotely comfortable.
For me as an artist, it has meant that little painting got done. But the sketches have been turning out beautifully. I have been doing more detailed work in my sketchbook. And now that the heat wave, if not the drought, has been broken, I have been taking the time to scan my drawings to show off.There are so very many, some taking days to complete, that I just can’t post them all here. If you would like to see some beautifully detailed dragons and mermaids and wise old wizards, go check out the Summer Sketching folder on my facebook page.
This summer also brought new licensing contracts for new products from Queen Kat Designs. Please go check out their website for fabrics, iron on transfers and coasters as well as the usual whimsical rubber stamps.
Later this month, I will be at FenCon in Dallas. My work will be in the art show and they tell me that I get to talk about steampunk art on that Sunday and will be forced to draw other people’s ideas on Saturday. Both should be lots of fun. Despite being terrified of drawing for an audience, I am looking forward to other people having to do the hard part of deciding what I should be drawing. And since FenCon will be Deep South Con, this year it should be even bigger and better than usual. And considering it has always been a pretty great event, I am just giddy about this year. Stop by, look at art, meet some great folks and enjoy some great discussions on fanzines, art, writing and some cool sci-fi literature.
And since you all are really just looking at a some purty pictures – here is my latest painting when I did just as soon as the temperatures droped to the low 90′s.

Sassy – A fairy sketch

Melia — Mon, 23 May 2011 19:45:35 +0000

This is a sketch I am working on in between trying to learn how to do some digital art. I am probably going to change the feet position on this one, since the reference photo for the pose the model had on heels, and I think I like the bare feet for fairies. I mean do they really need to wear those evil shoes when they can fly everywhere? Feet want to be free and should be any time you don’t have to worry about stepping on something sharp.
Speaking of my fashion designs for fairies, have you noticed something all my fairy costumes have in common? I do a draping neckline on them. Started drawing my fairies I kept thinking about how they would get into clothes with those beautiful wings coming out of their backs. So they have these tops that look like they probably pin together at the neck and shoulders, sort of an adaptation of the toga.
When I was a little girl I couldn’t decide if being an artist or a fashion designer would be more fun. My 2 main forms of indoor play were going through Grandma’s fabric scraps and making art. And since Grandma made costumes for all her friends for an annual costume ball they attended, I had some awesome scraps to play with. The year they had an Arabian Knights theme was my favorite. All that chiffon and lame’ and satin and sparkly trims had me in heaven. I used the bar stools to to tie chiffon to the legs to make harem tents and wrapped fabric around tea towels for beds and made little pillows for my Barbies with little belly dance costumes for them.
I think my fairies have become a melding of those childhood days of improbable fashions and painting. I suspect that I have never really grown up and that I will always be continuing that pretend play that I started as a very young child when grandma let me play in her scraps and bought me crayons and watercolors and only fussed when I used the pool table for an art table or picked all the green peaches off her peach tree.

Crazy Rainbow Dragon

Melia — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 06:18:29 +0000

This little fellow is the result of a contest I ran on my facebook fan page last week for the craziest idea for a dragon painting. His little sock and mohawk are going to be rainbow colored and one of those sharp little teeth will be gold. I had to go ahead and ink the sketch, because with that art nouveau border it was going to get complicated when I transferred it to watercolor paper. Which is the next step.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Melia — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 01:09:55 +0000

Because, yeah, I had to go there.

Purrfect Pearl – A sketch

Melia — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:59:00 +0000

I know I promised you all completed art everyday. But after a few, I realized that it just wasn’t possible for me. Not if I wanted to ever paint anything larger than a 5×7″. So I will try and post daily, but you just might be seeing more works in progress than completed paintings.
Purrfect Pearl is a result from a contest I am running on my facebook fanpage right now. Each week for 10 weeks I am giving away a matted 5×7 print. On Friday I will post the contest and Monday choose the winner. For week 1 I asked for titles for a mercat painting. Whichever one inspired me was the winner.
Purrfect Pearl features a cute little mercat holding an oyster with a pearl inside. Behind her is a pile of rejected open oysters. This sketch alone, represents about 3 hours worth of work. That doesn’t even count the straight up thinking time before I pulled out the sketchbook. Things as simple as “what size do I want to paint this?” to “How should I position the mercat?”.
The during process involved a lot of thinking too. What style of fin will she have, how will she be dressed, how should I repeat design elements (notice all the places the basic form for the shell crops up? Or the circle?), how do I design the border to bring the focus on the mercat.
Next is to use my light table to transfer the design to watercolor paper. Which to be honest, is my least favorite step.

Ice Days

Melia — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:06:54 +0000

First I was working on a Pay It Forward project that I posted on my fan page about. I might have to do another one next month, that was fun to be making art for specific people. Then came the horrible migraine. After that we have had the family home for 3 days with ice.
I know, you Northerners think we are a bunch of babies here in Texas. But we just don’t have the infrastructure to deal with cold like this. The best our town can do, is sprinkle some sand on the roads and say “sorry about those rolling blackouts”. I am just grateful that we have a fireplace, even if 360 days of the year I curse it taking up so much wall space. Today I hope to get some more details into a sketch I worked all day on yesterday. I will paint whenever my studio warms up enough that I don’t think the paint will freeze before it dries.
Anyway, you all want some eye candy, cause this here blog is supposed to be about the art, not complainin about the weather. So some of the PIF paintings and the beginnings of a sketch for my next project.

A Wayward Path

Melia — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 07:28:10 +0000

Things have been busy as usual around here. I guess the biggest piece of news is that you can now create my art for yourself with cross stitch patterns by Misty Dreamz.
Also for all you taggers, My Tag Art is now offering some cool bulk deals and you can get a huge discount, and can then make you own cool tags and avatars.
And of course there is the art. For those that have been following my art for the decade that I have been actually sending it out into the world, you might recognize the style that I have been working in lately. So who remembers that belly dancers and the mandalas? Yes, they are both back with a fantasy twist, with a little bit of Mucha’s art nouveau style (which has been showing up off and on for years).
My artistic style seems to meander along a twisty little path, and every so often doubles back on itself, so I can pick up a style that seemed to have been dropped by the wayside. Everything I see infects my art and sometimes it takes months or years to figure out how to incorporate this new vision on the world with what I was already doing.

In the beginning – oh about junior high or early highschool – I drew cats. I could copy a photo of any cat with prismacolors and a piece of mat board. Then I went to my first sci-fi conventions. Thst turned my world upside down. I was only 16 then. In college, I picked up an interest in mythology and prayer book illuminations. And that became a major influence. Then after college I was so tired of painting that I took up crazy quilting and researching Victorian life – which introduced me to Art Nouveau. After my daughter was born, I lost the sewing room to a nursery and picked up belly dancing to get back in shape – which lead to belly dance paintings first a pop art then a cubist style as I became more focused on capturing the movement of the dance than a realistic representation of the dancer. And of course a bit of research into eastern culture and meditation played out in the form of elaborate mandalas. Then I came back to the kitties, they started to sprout wings, which lead to fairies with art nouveau style borders and backgrounds.

Which is how I find myself today with sketchbooks filled with art of a variety of styles and subjects. And I have been cutting those sketchbooks up and scanning the sketches to save as digital files, and putting the originals up in a special shop on etsy.

Travel

Melia — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:25:10 +0000

This week’s Illustration theme is “Transportation”. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get out of my head the time my husband called me on his way to work to tell me that some guy was riding a unicycle in the rain. Doesn’t strike me as the most effective transportation for a rainy day. But maybe now that I have drawn it and shared it, I can get it out of my head.

The Start of a New Mini Art Journal

Melia — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:03:11 +0000

I have been falling in love with stamping. I still consider myself a newbie at it, but the wonderful ways you can use stamps is fascinating me. So I have decided to combine my new love of stamping with my old passion for sketchbooks. Here is the start of my new sketchbook and art journal. It is a fun pocket size book just right for having with me at all times.
Supplies:
Light blue card stock (cause that is the color I had today)
22lb bright white HP paper
Silver Pigment ink pad
black dye ink pad
Copic markers : RV13, YR23, E00, R27,E04,B60, B63,B12
QKD stamps:
Anticipation Kitty Stamp
Fairy Background Stamp
Funky Swirl Stamp

First in I did was cut the card stock and paper in half. I used 4 sheets of paper, but in half and folded will make for 16 sheets for the book.
Then I used the funky swirl stamp, the fairy background and even some nifty angel wings that have yet to be released and stamped all over the card stock with the silver ink pad. Then using the cupcake fairy cat from the anticipation set and the black ink pad, I stamped the right had side of the card stock (when folded becomes the front of the book).
Next I used my copic markers to color in the cupcake and fairy cat. What is really cool about this is that the silver ink slightly resists the copic marker ink and it makes a really cool texture.
Then I folded the card stock and paper together and stapled then went around the edges with the black ink pad. Next time I think I will use the silver or a gray for this.

Now I have a little pocket sketchbook and art journal. I no longer have an excuse to not have something to draw on. I want to fill it with a combination of sketches and stamping over the next few weeks. So come back again and see what is next – maybe a traveling sketching and stamping set so I don’t have to lug around my great big tote for picking up the girl from school.

Detail of texture

Proverbs, Revised Art and Tags

Melia — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:33:42 +0000

Illustration Friday theme this week is – Proverbs. So I found a Darkovan Proverb about dragons “It is ill done to chain a dragon for roasting your meat.” This little guy is done with graphite on newsprint.
I have also been updating some of my previous work. These 2 prismacolor drawings were some basic pen and ink line drawings that I did last year. While moving the studio I unearthed my colored pencils and couldn’t wait to see if I could still remember how to use them. I think I just might have.
And in other news, you can now license my work for your personal digital creations at My Tag Art. This cool steam punk tag was made by Jenny at mytagart.com. I am enjoying the forums there and seeing what lovely creations all the creative folks are making.